Joshua_9_I
For some reason the one thing that stood out of the many interesting points in this chapter was Simmons' comments on children's stories. On page 203 she begins, "They speak to people as if they are children in need of direction. Interesting, since I've noticed that even the most popular children's storytellers do not tell their stories for a position of superiority. Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who is read out loud from a position of equality. A good storyteller makes it clear that he is just as worried about that speck of dust called Whoville as the children listening." And she continues a little further.
I guess this got a lot of ideas going in the ol' noggin, for the sake of this post's length I'll discuss two. The first is that children's books have to be extremely difficult to write well. Think of how difficult it is to convey an abstract concept to a group of peers. Now try to imagine conveying the same idea to a bunch of imaginative second graders that are ready to move on to something more interesting if your story doesn't "do it" for them. A formidable task indeed.
The second is that interactive storytelling on the web is kind of like children's books. You don't have that much time to reach the viewer, you need to clearly explain your ideas, and it should be interesting enough to keep them engaged for the length of the story. Most importantly, you want the viewer to understand that you care about the story, not just the tech stuff that got it out there.
I know that Sarah has been reading a lot of children's series lately. Maybe we should all get on the bandwagon.
Labels: Joshua
posted by Joshua @ 7:57 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
A twofold response to your twofold comment:
First, I think of an Irish storyteller who assured me that children are the ultimate con artists. Therefore, he said, they can also tell when they're being conned. Never try to talk down to a child, he concluded. Instead, treat them like miniature adults.
Second, I think of a popular children's story never intended for publication: "The Hobbit."
J.R.R. Tolkien wrote "The Hobbit" as a bedtime story for his boys. Perhaps the intimate audience stripped it of pretense, and that's why it became a global phenomenon when released to the public.
I was trying to think of a very popular children’s book series. For very young children, I remember the Berenstain Bear series. Off the top of my head, I think that each book started with something like “Down a sunny dirt road, deep in bear country…” After the initial phrase was the start of a new topic. The topics were stories that children could relate to such as: trouble at school, bad dreams, going to the doctor, moving day, visiting the dentist, babysitters, getting in a fight, messy rooms, money, new neighbors, bullys, etc. Personally, I loved these stories when I was little. My favorite character was sister bear, who was a little girl, just like me. She had the same type of problems that I had, too. Now looking back at these books, I realize they are short enough to keep a child’s attention span. This is really important & hard to do.
Last weekend I babysat my boyfriends little brother. He is 3 ½ years old. I love children. I used to baby-sit all the time when I was in middle school & high school. Since I’ve been away at college/grad school, I haven’t been around small children nearly as much. Anyway, I’m around Everett a lot when I’m at Joe’s house, but this was the first time I’ve watched him by myself for an extended amount of time… I had lots of fall-related activities planned for the day, but couldn’t believe how short his attention span was. He had a few books with him, and we read some of them, but he’d loose interest about half-way through. This part of the chapter really made me think of last weekend.
I looked up the Berenstain Bears & they have a cute website: http://www.berenstainbears.com/
I totally agree that children's stories have to be some of the most difficult to write. It seems much more common for adults to wait out a slow or less-impressive beginning, but with children, if you don't get their attention fast, they'll tune you out or move on to something else.
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